Past Meets Present

Highlights from the Emory University Archives Collection

The distinctive collections in the Emory University Archives preserve the history and intellectual heritage of Emory University, its students, faculty, and staff. Part of the Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, the Emory University Archives is the repository for the official records of Emory University, as well as photographs, books, personal papers, audio and video recordings, artifacts, and memorabilia that document the rich history of Emory’s administrative offices, academic departments, and campus organizations, as well as the activities of its faculty, students, and staff. Selected for their enduring historical and administrative value, the ever-evolving collections offer a unique perspective on change and continuity in research, scholarship, administration, teaching, and student life at Emory over 175 years.

The Emory University Archives furthers the University’s teaching and research mission by providing access to its collections for students, faculty, administrators, and scholars at large. The diverse collections feature a vast range of materials including records of the Emory College and Emory University Boards of Trustees, student publications, departmental administrative materials, images of student and Greek Life, papers of past Emory presidents and key administrators, course catalogs, architectural plans, postcards, commencement programs, early Emory text and library books, faculty teaching materials and personal papers, scrapbooks and photo albums, diplomas, yearbooks, photographs of Emory’s Atlanta and Oxford campuses, and much more. By actively collecting books, papers, photographs, artifacts, and ephemera that document the growing University, the Emory University Archives is able to preserve and promote knowledge of Emory’s history, while at the same time providing researchers with a lens to critically examine, investigate, and understand Emory’s past, present, and future.

Featuring books, photographs, documents, and memorabilia, this exhibition, located on the 10th Floor in the Woodruff Library, highlights collections in the Emory University archives and offers a unique perspective on change and continuity in research, administration, teaching, and student life at Emory. The exhibit includes Dooley’s suit and shoes; the Collard Leaf (the oldest student publication in the archives, from 1867); early Emory textbooks and library books, records from the Board of Trustees, photographs of student and Greek life on campus, a D.V.S. Senior Society pipe carved with Dooley’s likeness, and much more.